Editing François Mitterrand (section)

====Second Cohabitation====
Disappointed with Rocard's apparent failure to enact the Socialists' programme, Mitterrand dismissed Michel Rocard in 1991 and appointed [[Édith Cresson]] to replace him. She was the first woman to become prime minister in France but proved a costly mistake due to her tendency to make acerbic and racist public remarks. After the Socialists experienced heavy losses in the 1992 regional elections, Cresson resigned from office. Her successor [[Pierre Bérégovoy]] promised to fight unemployment and corruption but he could not prevent the catastrophic defeat of the left in the [[1993 French legislative election|1993 legislative election]]. The Socialist Party suffered a crushing defeat with the right-wing parties winning 485 seats to the left's 95. He killed himself on 1 May 1993.

Mitterrand named the former RPR Finance Minister [[Edouard Balladur]] as Prime Minister. The second "cohabitation" was less contentious than the first, because the two men knew they were not rivals for the next presidential election. By this point, François Mitterrand was nearly 80 years old and suffering from cancer in addition to the shock of his friend [[François de Grossouvre]]'s suicide. His second and last term ended after the [[1995 French presidential election|1995 presidential election]] in May 1995 with the election of [[Jacques Chirac]]. Socialist candidate [[Lionel Jospin]] lost the presidential election.

Overall, as President, Mitterrand maintained the "basic characteristic of a strong welfare base underpinned by a strong state." A United Nations Human Development report concluded that, from 1979 to 1989, France was the only country in the OECD (apart from Portugal) in which income inequalities did not get worse.<ref>''France since 1870: Culture, Politics, and Society'' by Charles Sowerine</ref> During his second term as president, however, the gap between rich and poor widened in France,<ref>''One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century'' by Donald Sassoon</ref> with both unemployment and poverty rising in the wake of the economic recession of 1991–1993.<ref>''The Mitterrand Years: Legacy and Evaluation'' edited by Mairi Maclean</ref> According to other studies, though, the percentage of the French population living in poverty (based on various criteria) fell between the mid-Eighties and the mid-Nineties.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bT-3laKFEUsC&q=poverty+in+france+1981-1995&pg=PA149|title=Statistical Handbook on the Social Safety Net|first=Fernando Francisco|last=Padró|date=1 January 2004|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|isbn=9781573565165|access-date=17 October 2020|archive-date=20 March 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210320051336/https://books.google.com/books?id=bT-3laKFEUsC&q=poverty+in+france+1981-1995&pg=PA149|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cajWAgAAQBAJ|title=Innovations in Labour Market Policies The Australian Way: The Australian Way|last=OECD|date=17 July 2001|publisher=OECD Publishing|isbn=9789264194502|access-date=19 July 2016|archive-date=1 August 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200801215830/https://books.google.com/books?id=cajWAgAAQBAJ|url-status=live}}</ref>